I planted basil on August 15, both on the porch and in the plot, and it is doing really well. All herbs are doing great. I also have glass gem corn growing and hot peppers (the jalapenos are now all harvested). Only a couple more tomatoes. The Fairy Tale eggplant sadly fell victim to Hurricane Ida.
Today, I finished the garlic preparation for the this year’s harvest. I cleaned and braided 26 softnecks (and had another 11 heads that were split or not braidable) and also cleaned and destemmed 26 hardnecks. So overall, I harvested 63 heads. That should last me well into next year. However, I just realized that I forgot to save the biggest heads for planting this fall, so I need to cut four large heads from the braid prematurely. I will also save the four largest hardnecks.
While I was working in the garden this morning, a fellow gardener told me that today was National Sunflower Day. So, here is my contribution. I love sunflowers. This one is ten feet tall, so I can’t even pick them to bring home. It is all good as now the entire neighborhood gets to enjoy them this way.
I did some weeding and clearing today and transplanted a scraggly looking Kagran Summer head lettuce and some basil seedlings. I also sowed more fall greens, radishes and more pole beans.
The glass gem corn is flowering and looking great. The squash vines are all over the place and there are many flowers, but so far, I have not seen a fruit. The cucumbers are winding down, I pulled the vines from the pickling cukes, there is only the slicer left and I might get a few more fruit from the plant. I harvested a few carrots as well.
The tomatoes are still going very strong. The chard and kale are very short for some reason. Not sure whether they are shaded too much by the corn and tomatoes or whether they just had a slow start. I pulled the parsley as it was dying. Again.
I have so many tomatoes, we cannot keep up with eating them raw. So, I slow-roasted two baking sheets of tomatoes for a few hours (at 325F, but that was too hot, so I reduced it to 250F) and then packed them in olive oil and stored them in the fridge for use in pasta sauces and on pizza.
I had a ton of Thai basil on my back porch and turned it into Thai basil peanut pesto. I served it over pan-seared trout last night for dinner. Delicious!
And I made more quick refrigerator pickles with the pickling cucumbers form the plot. Yum! The cucumbers are coming to an end, it seems.
… and a zucchini, a cucumber and kale
Picked my first “real” tomatoes today. Unfortunately, I did not remember to look what type they were. One is a Striped Roman, two could be Black Krim and one could be Baker Family Heirloom. I have to go back and check the labels. I also harvested cherry tomatoes, two pickling cucumbers, a large zucchini and a few green beans. And flowers.
Lots of things are coming up in the garden right now: eggplant, peppers, tomatoes, cukes and kale and chard. I will pull some carrots and beets soon, and plant salad greens in the spot where the garlic used to be.
